Seattle Mariners: Evan White experiencing some serious growing pains

The expectations were high for Evan White as he entered the year and thus far the results have come nowhere near what we thought they’d be.

With a small sample size in tow, we look at the numbers Evan White has put up with a grain of salt. Where the numbers have not been good, they have been terrible, which is why we look at the numbers in the first place.

We knew young White was going to experience some growing pains in his first big league action. After signing a 6 YR/$24M deal prior to seeing any time at the major league level the Seattle Mariners were taking a gamble on one of their young guns. From the get-go, White has been the everyday first baseman and was going to learn, trial-by-fire-style.

White will experience bumps and bruises throughout the way and the more he gets accustomed to life in the big leagues, he’ll learn to adapt. Right now he is flustered and flailing at the plate and the results are evidence of this.

In the early going, White has made thirty-nine outs with more than half coming via the strikeout. His overall average sits at .114 and he has the lone home run in twelve games thus far. What is worse, he only has one hit and a .071 average in games at home.

Even if there were fans at games, there would not be birds to boo. The Mariners are in the rebuilding phase and have a good core of exciting players to grow with. Alongside Kyle Lewis, Shed Long, and J.P. Crawford, all of which are 25 years old or younger, White will form a solid unit which will produce wins down the road.

For this reason, the Mariners need to stick with White during his struggles and look the other way when they see the American League West standings. The team has the right mindset of win later, so regardless of how bad the outcome of each Evan White at-bat is right now, they need to continue to run him out there.

The patience now will pay dividends later.